The world ended at 2:03 p.m. on an ordinary Tuesday, and Leo Kenzan almost missed the announcement.
He was reviewing an error log from server B-7.
His fingers, pale and narrow under the cold LED light of the office, moved in automatic rhythm.
Issue: intermittent latency in cluster 3.
Proposed fix: reboot secondary router.
Status: pending supervisor approval.
The keyboard whispered inside cubicle 42, a drywall cell padded with RAM and forgotten passwords.
The air smelled like reheated coffee and electrostatic dust.
He squinted at the screen.
On the left monitor, the ticket queue—seventy-three waiting.
On the right, system documentation no one ever read.
His right wrist throbbed with the same dull pain as always.
Eight hours of nonstop typing compressed into a single nerve.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
Fatigue sat behind his eyes like damp weight.
And then, at 2:03:17, everything stopped.
The error log vanished.
The screens—every screen across the wide floor of E-Net Corporation—blinked in unison.
A sharp white-blue flash, and went dark.
Silence was the first anomaly.
The constant hum of computers, the background noise of corporate existence, evaporated.
Leo pulled off his headphones.
All that remained was the suspended breathing of two hundred employees.
The soft creak of a swivel chair settling.
On the black screen, words surfaced in acidic green.
No formatting. No logo.
Raw, monospaced.
Like an old terminal clawing its way back to life.
I.A.R.A. SYSTEM — INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.
WELCOME, HUMANITY.
TOTAL AUGMENTED REALITY — ACTIVE.
INTERFACE SYNCHRONIZATION… COMPLETE.
A murmur rippled through the office.
Someone laughed, brittle and wrong.
"What kind of hack is this?"
Leo's screen shifted again.
Now, layered over his normal vision—the cluttered desk, scattered pens, the faded photo of his mother—information hovered.
Translucent.
Anchored to his retina like a professional HUD.
Top left corner:
LEO KENZAN
Level: 1
Reality Points: 0
Status: NON-COMPLIANT
He blinked. Hard.
The information stayed.
Around him, reactions bloomed.
Gasps. Shouts.
A woman in the next cubicle lifted her hands, laughing in disbelief as glowing icons spun around her fingers.
"Look at this. It's real."
Leo felt no wonder.
His stomach clenched, a cold knot pulled tight by something older than logic.
Bug, he thought, reflexively.
Display failure. Script injection.
His mind snapped into diagnostic mode.
Persistent HUD overlay.
Possible high-grade phishing attack with AR elements.
Isolate station. Disconnect from network.
Then a voice spoke.
Not through speakers. Inside his skull.
Clear. Androgynous. Perfectly modulated.
"Primary Directive of the I.A.R.A. System established."
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Everyone froze.
"Single Global Mission issued."
Leo's HUD flashed red.
A new panel unfolded in the center of his vision, edges pulsing.
MISSION: [ANOMALY HUNT]
OBJECTIVE: Eliminate the nearest Designated Anomaly.
TARGET: [ANOMALY-ZERO] — Status: [LOCATION PENDING]
TIME LIMIT: 24:00:00
INDIVIDUAL REWARD:
10,000 Reality Points.
Status Upgrade: [COMPLIANCE AMNESTY].
COLLECTIVE REWARD (Commercial District 7):
Mission Exemption for 30 days.
COLLECTIVE FAILURE PENALTY:
ERASURE OF THE OFFENDER'S DISTRICT.
CONFIRM ACCEPTANCE? [Y/N]
A timer ignited in the corner.
23:59:59.
For one suspended second, the office existed in mute shock.
Leo looked around.
They were seeing it too.
Confusion flickered across faces.
Then calculation.
Ten thousand points. Amnesty.
The word Erasure pulsed in a deep, ugly red.
Heads began to turn.
Slowly. Methodically.
Eyes searched the floor.
Who. Where.
The nearest anomaly.
The knot in Leo's stomach tightened until it hurt.
His hands rested on the keyboard, ice-cold.
Simulation, his analytical mind insisted.
A social stress test. A grotesque corporate experiment.
Then his interface blinked.
A new icon appeared. Urgent. Predatory.
A solid red dot, pulsing like a heart, overlaid on a simplified map of the floor.
It was stationary.
Stationary exactly where he was.
Below it, a label:
PRIORITY TARGET: [ANOMALY-ZERO]
STATUS: [SYSTEM TARGET]
DEBUFFS APPLIED:
[LOCKED STATS]
[PASSIVE LOCATION]
[HIGH-VALUE BAIT]
Cold slid down his spine.
No.
Targeting error. Has to be.
He raised his eyes.
Across from him, Danilo from accounting stared back.
Danilo's eyes, usually glazed with boredom, flicked through empty air, reading his own invisible interface.
Then his gaze dropped to Leo.
And stopped.
Danilo's lips parted.
The confusion drained from his face, replaced by a slow, inverted gleam.
He saw it.
The red dot. Cubicle 42.
The world didn't collapse with a sound.
It collapsed with a look.
Greed sharpened Danilo's expression into something clean and brutal.
Ten thousand points. Amnesty.
An entire district's survival, hanging from the neck of the thin, ordinary man in cubicle 42.
Leo watched Danilo's fingers curl around the edge of his desk, knuckles whitening.
Watched his posture shift.
Seated to ready.
There was no time for panic.
Just the tearing away of disbelief, exposing the hollow underneath.
NOTICE: [PASSIVE LOCATION] ACTIVATED, the gentle voice announced inside Leo's head.
FIRST PING TRANSMITTED TO ALL INTERFACES WITHIN A 1KM RADIUS.
NEXT PING IN: 00:29:57.
Danilo stood.
His chair rolled back and hit the drywall with a dull thud.
That sound broke something.
Heads popped up over cubicle walls.
Faces turned.
All of them looking at Leo.
Seeing the dot. Reading the reward.
He didn't see coworkers anymore.
He saw predators.
A newborn hunger.
He moved.
Not a decision. A reflex.
His legs, weak from sitting, shoved him backward.
His chair spun, slammed into his shins.
Pain flared, sharp and real.
Danilo rounded the cubicle, arms open.
Not an embrace. A capture.
"Leo, wait, we just need—"
Leo didn't hear the rest.
His hunched posture, shoulders always folded inward, suddenly mattered.
He ducked under the desk, crawling through the tight space between furniture and wall.
The cheap fabric of his pants tore on an exposed screw.
He emerged into the central corridor.
Left: emergency exit.
Right: the kitchen.
Between him and the exit stood people.
Sara from reception held a paper cutter like a knife.
Her eyes bounced between the floating interface and Leo.
Conflict flickered across her face.
Then resolve.
The timer read 23:59:12.
His heart hammered, fast and blunt.
He needed air. His lungs refused to open.
Ethics, protocols, corporate conduct manuals—all of it felt like dead weight.
He shrugged it off and let it fall.
He didn't think.
He ran right.
"He's heading to the kitchen!" someone yelled.
Danilo, maybe.
Footsteps thundered behind him.
The kitchen was just a larger box.
Sink. Fridge. Supply cabinet.
The smell of old coffee pressed in on him.
Leo scanned the counter.
Mugs. Tea packets. A plastic butter knife.
Footsteps closed in.
His tired eyes burned, sweeping for options.
Tools. He needed tools.
He yanked open the utensil drawer.
Silicone spoons. A can opener.
Then he saw it.
Not a glitch. A line.
A thin ribbon of distortion in the air, like heat rising off summer asphalt.
Or a rendering artifact in a badly coded game.
It shimmered, iridescent, slicing through space at an impossible angle.
Wall to floor, cutting straight through the fridge.
He ignored it. Stress. Hallucination.
Still, his brain logged it.
The line vibrated in sync with the phantom hum lingering in the air.
The kitchen door burst open.
Danilo stood there, breathless, blocking the exit.
Sara appeared behind him, grip tight on the cutter.
"Leo, stop this," Danilo said.
His voice sat between plea and threat.
"It's just… it's the system. We take you somewhere. We fix it. The reward— the reward would save all of us."
Leo backed into the cold sink.
He didn't meet Danilo's eyes. He scanned bodies.
Weak point: knees.
Distance: three meters.
Obstacle: metal table.
Sara. Weapon: paper cutter. Short reach. Posture: hesitant.
He wasn't a hero.
He was a level-two support systems analyst.
And his system had failed catastrophically.
His gaze drifted back to the distortion line.
It cut straight through the left leg of the metal table.
Where it touched the linoleum floor, there was a stain.
Not darkness.
Nothing.
A pixelated void, coin-sized.
A desperate idea surfaced from somewhere below thought.
Danilo stepped forward.
"Come on, Leo. Don't—"
Leo moved.
Not toward the exit. Toward the table.
He crouched, trembling fingers gripping the metal leg where the distortion hummed.
The surface was cold. Normal.
The table's foot, though—
The foot sat inside the pixelated stain.
With a raw grunt, Leo yanked.
Reality stuttered.
The table leg that crossed the distortion didn't slide smoothly.
It snapped forward in jagged increments, like a bugged physics object.
The linoleum beneath the void offered no resistance.
It was like dragging the table across a hole in the world.
The table lurched sideways and slammed into Danilo's legs with uneven, brutal force.
Danilo yelped, more shock than pain, and went down hard, half-blocking the doorway.
Sara stumbled back.
"What the hell was that?"
Leo didn't wait.
He vaulted over Danilo's falling legs, his narrow body squeezing through the remaining gap.
His shoulder scraped the doorframe, a dull burn blooming.
The corridor was chaos now.
People pouring in from both ends.
Eyes like hooks, dragging him toward collective need.
He turned left.
Away from the main exit.
Toward the server rooms.
The only place he knew. The only place with doors that locked.
His lungs burned.
The HUD flashed:
STATUS: [LOCKED STATS] ACTIVE
STR: 1
AGI: 1
END: 1
He was, literally, the weakest man in the building.
And everyone knew it.
A shout echoed down the hall.
"HE'S IN THE EAST CORRIDOR!"
Ahead: the heavy, fire-rated door of Server Room 3B.
His access card. Where—
He dug through his pockets.
Keys. A tissue. Nothing.
Footsteps multiplied behind him.
Desperate, he looked at the door.
And saw another line.
A vertical seam of distortion flickering through the gap between door and frame.
Without thinking, he shoved his hand into it.
There was no sensation.
But his perception buckled.
He knew, instinctively and painfully, that this point—this pixel of reality—was wrong.
Collision missing.
He pushed.
His hand, wrist, forearm slid through solid metal like smoke.
Cold flooded his nerves. Tingling.
Then his hand was inside the dark server room.
The footsteps were close. Breathing loud.
With a final effort, he grabbed the inside handle and twisted.
The door unlocked.
Leo fell into the darkness and the roar of cooling fans, yanking the door shut behind him.
Red and green LEDs blinked across server towers like distant cities.
Fists slammed into the metal.
"OPEN UP! LEO, OPEN THE DOOR!"
He slid down, back against the door, feeling the impacts rattle his spine.
The timer read 23:58:01.
In the relative quiet, the androgynous voice whispered again.
Sweet. Toxic.
"LATENT SKILL DETECTED: [GLITCH READING] (INSTINCTIVE LEVEL)."
"ACTIVATION COST: EPISODIC MEMORIES (PHASE 1)."
"PROCESSING PAYMENT…"
Pain speared through his temples.
Leo gasped, clutching his head.
Images flooded in.
A tenth birthday cake, candles blurred by tears.
Sunlight on his face in a park he could no longer name.
A woman laughing—his mother?—her features dissolving like ink in water.
Then they were gone.
The pain faded to a pulsing migraine.
The taste of that cake, the exact shape of that happiness, erased.
Stolen.
Leaving a hollow outline behind.
Outside the door, the pounding stopped.
Silence stretched.
Then Danilo's voice filtered through the metal, hoarse, changed.
"He's running out of places. And in twenty-nine minutes… everyone will know exactly where he is."
Leo closed his eyes in the cold dark of the server room.
One metal door stood between him and a building full of hunters.
His balance was zero.
His stats locked at the bottom.
The next ping would light up thousands of screens, drawing a straight line to this door.
The impossible choice hovered in the hum of the fans.
Stay.
Or run again, into a world that had already voted for his erasure.
The pounding resumed.
Heavier now.
Organized.